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Dessert

Macaroni Pudding

A sweet macaroni pudding made with macaroni, water, butter, milk, powdered sugar, lemon peel, cinnamon, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Macaroni Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in 1 pint of water until tender.

Combine and simmer

  1. Add butter, milk, powdered sugar, lemon peel, cinnamon, and salt to the macaroni.

  2. Stir gently to combine without breaking the macaroni.

  3. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Turn the mixture into a deep dish and serve with sugar and cream.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the body of the pudding as it softens and absorbs the liquid.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that thickens into a creamy, soft texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the pudding and dissolves easily into the warm milk.

The step that matters

Stir gently to combine without breaking the macaroni. Cooked macaroni is soft and fragile. Vigorous stirring tears the pieces and releases extra starch, leaving the pudding mushy and gluey instead of tender with distinct pasta pieces.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, sugar, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, sugar, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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